The Cuban Club

The Cuban Club

Author: Barry Gifford

Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Published: 2017-10-24

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1609807901

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A masterpiece of mood and setting, character and remembrance, The Cuban Club is Barry Gifford's ultimate coming-of-age story told as sixty-four linked tales, a creation myth of The Fall as seen through the eyes of an innocent boy on the cusp of becoming an innocent man. Set in Chicago in the 1950s and early ‘60s against the backdrop of small-time hoodlums in the Chicago mob and the girls and women attached to them, there is the nearness of heinous crimes, and the price to be paid for them. To Roy and his friends, these twists and tragedies drift by like curious flotsam. The tales themselves are koan-like, often ending in questions, with rarely a conclusion. One story, a letter from Roy to his father four years after his father's death, is written as if the older man were still alive. Indeed, throughout The Cuban Club Roy is in some doubt whether divorce or even death really exists in a world where everything seems so alive and connected. Barry Gifford has been writing his Roy stories on and off for over thirty years, and earlier Roy stories have been published in Wyoming, Memories from a Sinking Ship and The Roy Stories. But it is in The Cuban Club that he brings the form he has created in these stories to its crystallization. Indeed, to find precedents for The Cuban Club, we must look not to other story collections, but to other creation myths—to Gilgamesh, or the Old Testament, or Eduardo Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy. Roy's age here wends back and forth between six and nineteen and back to twelve. He sees with the ageless eyes of a seer and knows not to judge the good or the bad in circumstances or people, or even to question why things are as they are, instead gathering to himself the romance of a world that teeters on catastrophe always, even as it abounds in saving graces.


Cuban Music

Cuban Music

Author: Maya Roy

Publisher:

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13:

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Native Americans supplied the maracas. African slaves brought drums and ritual music, and Spaniards brought guitars, brass instruments, and clarinets along with European ballroom dancing. The advent of blues and jazz gave new forms to styles of songs, notably feeling songs, which joined the more traditional styles of trova and bolero. Cuban culture represents a convergence of these diverse backgrounds, and the musical heritage presented in this book reflects these traditions as well. In colonial times, African ritual sounds mixed with Catholic liturgies and brass bands of the Spanish military academies. Ballroom dances, including French music from Haiti popular in 18th-century Havana society, existed side by side with the cabildos (guilds and carnival clubs) and the plantations. The son, considered the expression of Cuban musical identity, had its origins in a rural setting in which African slaves and small farmers from Andalusia worked and played music together, developing many variations over the years, including big band music. Cuban music is now experiencing a major renaissance, and is enjoyed throughout the world.


The Cuban Affair

The Cuban Affair

Author: Nelson DeMille

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-09-19

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 1501101722

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Mac has left his life of danger and adventure behind him. But when Carlos, a hotshot lawyer heavily involved with anti-Castro groups, approaches Mac for a ten-day fishing tournament in Cuba - to be accompanied by a covert mission and a sizable paycheck - Mac's interest is piqued. Mac understands that if he accepts this job, he'll either walk away rich - or not at all.


Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

Cuba (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

Author: Ada Ferrer

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-09-07

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 1501154575

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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN HISTORY “Full of…lively insights and lucid prose” (The Wall Street Journal) an epic, sweeping history of Cuba and its complex ties to the United States—from before the arrival of Columbus to the present day—written by one of the world’s leading historians of Cuba. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued—through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country’s future. Meanwhile, politics in Washington—Barack Obama’s opening to the island, Donald Trump’s reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden—have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an “important” (The Guardian) and moving chronicle that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Along the way, Ferrer explores the sometimes surprising, often troubled intimacy between the two countries, documenting not only the influence of the United States on Cuba but also the many ways the island has been a recurring presence in US affairs. This is a story that will give Americans unexpected insights into the history of their own nation and, in so doing, help them imagine a new relationship with Cuba; “readers will close [this] fascinating book with a sense of hope” (The Economist). Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on more than thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States—as well as the author’s own extensive travel to the island over the same period—this is a stunning and monumental account like no other.


Letters from Cuba

Letters from Cuba

Author: Ruth Behar

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-08-31

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0525516492

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Pura Belpré Award Winner Ruth Behar's inspiring story of a Jewish girl who escapes Poland to make a new life in Cuba, where she works to rescue the rest of her family The situation is getting dire for Jews in Poland on the eve of World War II. Esther's father has fled to Cuba, and she is the first one to join him. It's heartbreaking to be separated from her beloved sister, so Esther promises to write down everything that happens until they're reunited. And she does, recording both the good--the kindness of the Cuban people and her discovery of a valuable hidden talent--and the bad: the fact that Nazism has found a foothold even in Cuba. Esther's evocative letters are full of her appreciation for life and reveal a resourceful, determined girl with a rare ability to bring people together, all the while striving to get the rest of their family out of Poland before it's too late. Based on Ruth Behar's family history, this compelling story celebrates the resilience of the human spirit in the most challenging times.


Buena Vista in the Club

Buena Vista in the Club

Author: Geoffrey Baker

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2011-04-14

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 0822349590

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Geoffrey Baker traces the trajectory of the Havana hip hop scene from the late 1980s to the present and analyzes its partial eclipse by reggaet&ón.


Black Pedro Pan

Black Pedro Pan

Author: Ricardo Gonzalez Zayas

Publisher:

Published: 2020-04-26

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13:

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The early migration of Cuban refugees to the United States after the ascent to power of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, was made up in disproportionate numbers by white (or lighter skin) Cubans. As part of that migration, Operación Pedro Pan reflected the racial make-up of those seeking to leave the island. In Black Pedro Pan, the author recounts his childhood and major family influences that gave shape to his life. As he entered his teenage years, his life is abruptly interrupted by his participation in Operacion Pedro Pan, a program that saw the mass exodus of over 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban minors ages 6 to 18 to the United States, where the vast majority were received and sheltered by the Catholic Welfare Bureau. He then briefly describes his participation in the program, his personal experiences and observations after his reunification with his exiled parents at age 17. As he continues his life's journey, he offers, through a series of vignettes and anecdotes, his outlook on racial issues in general, his insights into the Cuban exile and African-American communities and the relationship between the two, and, from a distance, his impressions on the state of his native country, all from the perspective of a Black Cuban (or perhaps as appropriate, a Cuban Black).


The Cubans of Union City

The Cubans of Union City

Author: Yolanda Prieto

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 2009-08-31

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1439903441

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Ethnic community building and immigrant success in "Havana on the Hudson."


Havana Boxing Club

Havana Boxing Club

Author:

Publisher: powerHouse Books

Published: 2015-12-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781576877838

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Boxing is one of the most popular sports in Cuba and its fighters are recognized the world over for their skills and finesse. The Cuban national team holds more Olympic medals in the sport than any other country, making the nation a hotbed of emerging global champions. State-sanctioned and promoted since the revolution, amateur boxing's potential for fame and relative wealth makes it a beacon for impoverished youth yearning for a better life. Shot all across the Republic of Cuba,Havana Boxing Clubdocuments amateur boxing schools and the aspiring, determined boys studying the sweet science. Compiled over the course of eight years, French photographer Thierry Le Goues spent countless hours in the complex network of training facilities that abound in the island nation, developing relationships with the coaches and their young progeny, following the rise and fall of countless talents and wannabes. The resulting images are of young fighters struggling, sweating, and fighting to overcome anything thrown in their way--inside the ring and out. Le Goues' luscious tritone black and white photographs depict rigorous training camps, boxing rings erected in the streets of small villages in the Cuban countryside, the lows of these young boxers struggling with abject poverty and crushing defeat, and the ultimate highs of rising up victorious over all obstacles and challengers. The pure instinct to survive against overwhelming odds and to realize their dreams of boxing on the national team is both startling and beautiful.Havana Boxing Clubcaptures the sport's arresting beauty and unrelenting brutality.


The Roy Stories

The Roy Stories

Author: Barry Gifford

Publisher: Seven Stories Press

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1609804988

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Barry Gifford has been writing gritty, American tales for the past forty years. His novels, stories, poetry, and films have helped shape the American neo-noir genre. The New York Times Book Review says that he "can sum up in a few words the cruelty, horror, and crushing banality that shape an entire life.” Andrei Codrescu calls Gifford “a great comic realist,” while Pedro Almodóvar likens him to the surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel, and Jonathan Lethem describes his style as “William Faulkner by way of B-movie film noir, porn paperbacks, and Sun Records rockabilly.” In The Roy Stories Gifford brings his signature style to a collection of tales following the character of Roy, who has made appearances in a number of Gifford’s previous story collections. Roy lives a mystical kind of life, skinning crocodiles in Southern Florida at age nine in the 1940s and playing in the back alleys of Chicago in the 1950s. This deep-feeling boy observes every detail in his surroundings with a sense of dark humor and an openness that will clutch readers tightly by the heart and lead them on a historical journey.